Buyer Needs Just Became a Search Engine — and It Works While You Sleep
By Liz Bates, Founder & CEO, Who’s Got Pockets · DRE 01434739
Somewhere in Orange County right now, there’s an agent with a buyer who is ready to write. Approved, motivated, maybe even cash. And somewhere else in Orange County, there’s an agent sitting on exactly the property that buyer wants — a seller who’d move for the right number, a home that hasn’t hit the market yet.
Most weeks, those two agents never find each other. Not because the match doesn’t exist — because the system for finding it doesn’t. A buyer need posted into a busy feed gets seen by whoever happens to scroll past it that hour. Then it’s buried. The match was there. The timing wasn’t.
This week’s brief is about how we fixed that.
The Buyer Needs Board Now Works Like a Search
The Buyer Needs board inside the WGP Network isn’t a feed you scroll and hope. It’s a board you search — the way you’d search the MLS.
Every buyer need is posted with real criteria: city, budget, property type, beds, square footage, lot, views, timeline. And the board has filters to match. Listing agent with a quiet seller in Laguna Niguel? Filter to Laguna Niguel, set the price band, and see every active buyer looking there right now — each one with the agent’s name, brokerage, and direct contact info attached.
That’s the whole play. No portal in the middle. No referral fee on either end. Agent to agent, in about ninety seconds.
Match Alerts: The Board That Comes to You
Searching is step one. But the real engine is Match Alerts — and if you haven’t turned them on yet, this is your nudge.
Here’s how it works, in both directions:
Post a pre-market property (with your seller’s permission), and every member whose buyer need matches your city, property type, and price range gets an email the moment it goes live. You don’t chase the buyers — the network brings them to you.
Post a buyer need with alerts turned on, and the reverse happens: the moment a matching property posts to the network, you get an email. Your buyer need keeps working for you at 11 PM on a Tuesday, whether you’re at a caravan, a closing, or asleep.
Matching runs on city, property type, and budget (with a sensible cushion above your buyer’s number, because we all know how that conversation goes). Every alert lands in your inbox with one click through to the details.
What a Working Buyer Need Looks Like
This isn’t theory. This week a member posted a San Juan Capistrano buyer — approved up to $2.5M, single-family, four bedrooms, 2,500+ square feet, wants a yard, ready to move now. That need is live on the board today, searchable by every member with an SJC pocket, and wired into Match Alerts the moment something fits.
That’s what your buyer deserves too. Not one shot in a feed — a standing search working around the clock.
Do This Before Tuesday’s Caravan
Three steps, ten minutes total:
1. Post your buyer need. Go to Post a Buyer Need and be specific — real budget, real cities, real musts. Specific needs get answered; vague ones get skipped. (More on writing a great one in Wednesday’s brief.)
2. Turn on Match Alerts. Check the alerts box when you post, and visit the Match Alerts page to see how the matching works.
3. Search the board before you preview. Before your next listing appointment or caravan, spend two minutes on the Buyer Needs board. Knowing there are three ready buyers for your seller’s neighborhood changes that kitchen-table conversation.
Free. Still. Always.
All of it — the board, the search, the alerts, the Roundup exposure — is free for agents. It was free when this started as a Facebook group in 2013, it’s free for the 2,600+ agents in the community today, and it will stay free. That’s the pledge.
If you’re not in the network yet, joining takes about two minutes. Your buyer is one post away from every pocket in Orange County.
Who’s Got Pockets is an agent-to-agent network. Buyer needs are shared by the buyer’s agent; pre-market properties are shared inside the network with the seller’s permission. MLS Clear Cooperation compliance is the responsibility of the listing agent and their brokerage.
